This is an entry I started writing up a long time ago, in the last week of August just before Susan’s arrival, and never finished. Some of the events were quite interesting, so I’m going to post it now despite the long delay.
The major annual festival of the Ga people, who came to the Accra region before European contact and are still the most numerous here, marks the harvesting of the first new yams. It is called “Homowo,” which means “hooting at hunger.” By tradition it is celebrated first in Jamestown, the oldest Ga settlement and one of the poorest areas of Accra, and later in other neighborhoods and towns and villages. The 16 Calvin students and I saw the processions of chiefs and warriors forming in the streets of Jamestown from our bus windows on our orientation tour of Accra, just a few days after the students arrived. We also saw large numbers of police and soldiers stationed around the neighborhood in case of trouble. High population density, pervasive poverty, and disputes over land and leadership have often turned celebrative crowds into rioting mobs in Jamestown. Fortunately nothing of the sort happened this year.
Our second Homowo was a huge gathering at Amasaman, administrative seat of the Ga West district, where we were seated as honored guests near the dais for visiting dignitaries and were filmed by Ghana Broadcasting cameras—the only white faces among many thousands attending. The guest of honor was Vice President John Dramani Mahama, who shook some of the students’ hands when he greeted the crowd and gave a speech—reported on later in the newspaper—calling on traditional authorities to resolve their differences, settle disputes over succession, and work to help their communities. He noted that neither presidents nor vice presidents had been willing to speak at Homowo gatherings for many years because of the frequent outbreaks of conflict, but he commended the Ga Districts as a commendable exception.
While waiting several hours for events to get underway, in between rainshowers, we were invited to the courtyard of the chief’s palace. There we watched—and then helped—a crowd of local women prepare the special festival food, kpoikpoi, which is made from ground maize and cassava with some palm oil and peppers, all pounded in a large mortar. Before everyone gathered at a central square for the “durbar of chiefs,” the chief of the local community had led a procession to every corner of his village, conveying new year greetings and scattering kpoikpoi on the ground in front of every dwelling with a blessing on its residents. He was accompanied by a noisy throng of dancers, drummers, and a small brass band, but we were sitting inside and weren’t told what was going on, so we just heard the commotion from a distance. After the procession returned and all the speeches were finished we were invited to “lunch” (at 4 pm) at the official residence of the mayor (“Municipal Chief Executive” is his formal title). It was a lavish feast of a dozen or more dishes. Also invited were the mayor’s staff and extended family and friends and a crowd of police who had been on duty—nearly a hundred people in all. The location was the lovely and spacious home in expansive grounds that once housed the British District Commissioner, the same house where our Sister Cities delegation was entertained in August 2004.
Several of the senior police officers went out of their way to welcome the Calvin students—the female ones, at least. One extended an invitation to travel with him for a week, and was rather evasive when the student asked whether his wife would object. She asked a Ghanaian who had accompanied us to come and rescue her, but (so she reports) he just sat at some distance and enjoyed the spectacle of a 19 year old American fighting off the advances of a somewhat inebriated 60 year old police officer.
At Daniel Sackey’s invitation, two of the Calvin students and I attended another Homowo event a week later. We arrived about 10:30 and greeted the paramount chief of the village of Ashiaman. It was nothing like our meeting with the chief in Adenkrobe, who sat with great dignity, wearing traditional cloth, and spoke only in Ga to his elders and never directly to us, and we were never invited to shake his hand (except one student after she closed the meeting with prayer). The Ashiaman chief was seated on his stool when we arrived, with four or five of his elders around him—that much was the same. But he was wearing a polo shirt and a baggy pair of waxcloth shorts. He stood up and welcomed us in English, with a handshake, then excused himself to take a cell phone call and get things organized for the ceremonies.
We had been assured that the major events would be finished by 1:00 pm, but in fact that was when things got underway. The senior elder—the kingmaker who is allowed to sit on the chief's stool and assists in his installation—invited us in to "take kpokpoi" while we were waiting, and we were each served a big bowl of the traditional Homowo food, whose consistency is somewhat like couscous, with fish stew, a rich, spicy dark sauce in which there was the front or back half of a smoked fish and a gristly piece of goat.
Just as we finished the official arrival of the chief--now formally dressed in a red cloth with a ceremonial hat--was announced by drummers. Huge basins of dry kpokpoi and tureens of fish stew were arranged in front of the stool. The kingmaker sat there and mixed them together, threw some on the ground for the ancestors, and tasted the stew to assure the chief that it was not poisoned. Now things got really noisy and frantic. A large group of women came dancing and shouting out of the house, and the chief took off on a fast-paced tour of every corner of the village, throwing kpokpoi on the ground and pouring an occasional libation of schnapps. Following behind were drummers and a—well, I guess we can’t call one trumpet player a brass band, but he did his part.
There were also a couple of dozen policemen on hand. It’s a little unnerving when a man cradling an AK-47 in his arms greets you with a big smile and bids you welcome—that’s what happened over and over as I followed the procession and snapped photos. And there was a flare-up this time: as I was passing one large compound at the back of the crowd, well behind the chief, young men were yelling at each other, then swinging sticks, then throwing stones. I got hit by a couple of small stones, and other villagers hustled me quickly behind a building out of range. Nobody could tell me what was going on, except that young men like to make trouble sometimes.
Two days later I learned more from the newspaper. Trouble had broken out when the chief blessed the ground at the compound of an older man who believes he is the rightful chief of the town and despises the younger usurper whom the elders have enstooled. Young men from his family not only threw stones, as I had observed, but attacked members of the chief’s party with machetes, sending several people to the hospital with serious injuries. Indeed, the potential for conflict was so high that the sitting chief had been forbidden to hold any public Homowo events. He had been told to mark the event only inside his own compound.
Two things still amaze me about this. First, the disputed enstoolment did not take place last week, or last month, but ten years ago. The conflict has festered for a decade, with two hostile camps living side by side in a small village in greater Accra. Second, I’m astonished that our Ga District contacts invited us to attend what was in effect an illegal festival celebration, mentioning nothing about the simmering conflict. We were never in any real danger, to be sure. But it was disturbing to read in the newspaper how the police responded when scuffling broke out: by running away.
We didn’t stay for the durbar or any of the speeches, but even so we returned to campus two hours later than planned, just in time to depart again for a a "guitar festival" at which two of the great figures of Ghanaian popular music, Koo Nimo and George Darko, were to be featured performers. Susan’s cousin Elizabeth, Jeff and their 6-year-old daughter Cailyn joined me and most of the students at their hostel and we drove together to a private park just 8 km or so from the campus—less than half an hour’s drive if it weren’t for all the sections of road that have been torn up by construction projects and turned into rough patches of dirt and mud.
In a lovely wooded park with well-tended flowers and trees and a small stage, a crowd of about 150 Ghanaians and Europeans enjoyed a marvellous potpourri of the best Ghanaian pop, not just highlife but also reggae and jazz and traditional music (seprewa and one-string bow and balaphone--but juiced up with some pop elements). Adja Koo Nimo is over 70 now and performs infrequently, but he brought his Traditional Music Ensemble all the way from Kumasi to perform. He still has a lot of red-hot guitar licks, which he now intersperses with brief comments drawing on traditional proverbs and songs to put highlife music in context. I sat with Esi Sutherland and introduced her to Jeff and Elizabeth and the students. (She was our literature instructor in 2004 and 2005, a former government minister and a major figure in Ghanaian literary life.) Koo Nimo gave a warm tribute to Esi’s mother Efua as his teacher and collaborator for the last 15 years of her life, and he dedicated his next song to Esi, who said, "Excuse me, David, but since he has honored me I must go and dance."
George Darko, a more recent figure who offers a more pop-flavored highlife style, got the whole crowd out of their seats to dance when he closed out the show. He’s no young man either—perhaps in his late 50s—but both he and Koo Nimoo have filled out their bands with very talented young musicians, perpetuating the more relaxed and danceable pop styles that predate today’s heavily electrified and synthesizer-driven “hiplife” and “raga.”
Most of the Calvin women students were quickly claimed by Ghanaian partners, some of them musicians from the bands that had just left the stage. They wasted no time declaring their intent: "We should get married and have children together." The Calvin women tried not to give out their cell phone numbers, but one let down her guard. We wondered how long it would take til she got a call to say “I miss you and I want to see you again soon.” The answer: about 15 minutes.
Before Elizabeth and Jeff and Cailyn had to leave to pick Margaret at her friend’s house I asked Cailyn if I could have her last dance. All four of us ended up on the dance floor having a grand time, Cailyn mostly dancing up on my shoulders. A moment later a slender young man came up and greeted me. "Hello Prof! I am happy that you are back in Ghana. When did you arrive?" It was Aaron Bebe Sakura, the seprewa virtuoso (whom Janna has met at LEAF in North Carolina). He is teaching at the university again, and we agreed to meet there later. I want to be sure the students have a chance to hear him and John Collins perform with the Local Dimension Palm Wine Band.
Sunday (29 August) was, at last, a day of rest, when all that was on my schedule was going to church, welcoming our dear friend Abraham N'gan'ga who will spend the afternoon with me before flying home to London, and preparing some sort of supper (without a stove, since it still isn’t working) for all of the students, who will come to my flat from 5 to 7. I haven't had more than a half-day free since I arrived nearly three weeks ago, and I've been putting in workdays that start at 7 and end about 11, but it's all paying off so well that I don't mind a bit.
There are so many ways in which Ghana 2010 has achieved what Susan and I worked very hard to put in place in 04 and 05! Several of the things we introduced for the first time—traveling to Wli Falls and other sites in the Volta region, commissioning graduation stoles, visiting Ga District communities, visiting both Moslem and Christian NGO’s in the North, arranging conversations with imams and mallams as well as Christian pastors—have become regular parts of the program each year. Samuel Ntewusu, who has been involved with the program to some extent each year from its beginning in 2002, told a colleague at the university the other day, "Calvin's program was at the brink of extinction when Prof came in 2004 and built it back up again." It’s kind of him to say but gives Susan and me far too much credit. We were able to set some changes in motion that others have carried through, greatly enhancing the quality of instruction and the richness of the students’ experience.
